Pokemon, ghosting and woke: Dictionary adds 300 new words

The term presstitute has become official just in time for the general presidential election.

A pressitute is “a journalist or media source whose news coverage is considered to be inappropriately influenced by business interests, political motives,” according to dictionary.com. The word is one of more than 300 words that the website added Tuesday.

A few of the new terms refer to media, such as presstitute, lamestream and hot take. Others refer to sexual identity, such as intersectionality (“the theory that the overlap of various social identities, as race, gender, sexuality, and class, contributes to the specific type of systemic oppression and discrimination experienced by an individual”), lumbersexual (“a man whose style of dress and appearance is reminiscent of the ruggedly masculine stereotype of the lumberjack”) and misgender (“to refer to or address a person, especially one who is transgender, with a pronoun, noun, or adjective that inaccurately represents the person’s gender or gender identity”).

Video games also brought out some new official words, such as Pokemon and Minecraft. Zika virus, a mosquito-borne illness especially running rampant in South and Central America, was also added.

Many more referred to pop culture references, such as mom jeans (“unstylish women’s jeans”), train wreck (“a person who has experienced a personal failure, disaster”), ghosting (“the practice of suddenly ending all contact with a person without explanation, especially in a romantic relationship”) and manspread (“to sit with one’s legs far apart, taking up too much space on a seat shared with other people”).

Here are a few other words added that you may or may not have heard before:

▪  Butthurt: Mental distress or irritation caused by an overreaction to a perceived personal slight

▪  Hijra: A person whose gender identity is neither male nor female, typically a person who was born male and dresses as a woman

▪  Free-range parenting: A style of child rearing in which parents allow their children to move about without constant adult supervision, aimed at instilling independence and self-reliance.

▪  Al desko: Eating at one’s desk in an office

▪  Woke: Actively aware of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights

This story was originally published July 19, 2016 at 9:57 AM with the headline "Pokemon, ghosting and woke: Dictionary adds 300 new words."